Gretchen Pressley

It's hard to really get the most important pieces out of these two articles since they were written so long ago. However, I think it's safe to say that aspects of the backpack journalist, that is, the ability to do many different types of journalistic production, is becoming very important in virtually all media outlets today. And that's a good thing. Video, audio, blogs, etc all add to the way that we, as journalists, can get the news across to our audience. That doesn't mean that amateurish production is going to be tolerated. We still need to be able to master each of the mediums that we attempt, or we aren't going to be able to adequately engage our audiences with any news. Luckily for us, our generation grew up using the internet and has embraced what the new technology can do for the news. Since we are all in a convergence class, I think it's safe to assume that we all think these skills are going to be worthwhile in the job market someday. However, the idea of one journalist who is able to take pictures, write a story, get audio, get video and still put together a decent package, like some of the first article's examples, is unrealistic. One person in a million would be able to do a good job at so many tasks at once. To be professional journalists, we have to take the time to learn how to correctly use each medium and then concentrate on deciding what stories work best with what medium. If it's a story big enough to warrant all that a backpack journalist could do, it's big enough to warrant using a group of people to do a more professional job. While it's helpful to be able to switch back and forth, no one person can do everything all the time.